Local Environment

The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

ISSN: 1354-9839 (Print) 1469-6711 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cloe20

Civil society participation in urban sanitation and

solid waste management in Uganda

J. T. Tukahirwa , A. P.J. Mol & P. Oosterveer

To cite this article: J. T. Tukahirwa , A. P.J. Mol & P. Oosterveer (2010) Civil society participation
in urban sanitation and solid waste management in Uganda, Local Environment, 15:1, 1-14,
DOI: 10.1080/13549830903406032

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13549830903406032

Published online: 22 Jan 2010.

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Local Environment
Vol. 15, No. 1, January 2010, 1–14

Civil society participation in urban sanitation and solid waste

management in Uganda
J.T. Tukahirwa , A.P.J. Mol and P. Oosterveer

Environmental Policy Group Wageningen UR, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen,

The Netherlands

The inability of local governments to provide basic environmental services in African

urban centres often results in the involvement of other actors in urban sanitation and
solid waste provisioning, such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs),
community-based organisations (CBOs) and private companies. Although NGOs and
CBOs are becoming increasingly engaged in urban service provisioning, little
systematic knowledge exists on the kind of activities they take up and the results of
these activities. This paper reviews the role of NGOs and CBOs in sanitation and
solid waste management in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Against the
background of a modernised mixtures perspective and the partnership paradigm, an
assessment is made of NGOs and CBOs in provisioning these environmental
services. Data were gathered through a survey, face-to-face interviews, and the use of
scientific literature, official reports and informal documents. Over 40 NGOs and
CBOs were found to be actively involved – often in partnership – in the
implementation and development of sanitation and solid waste activities. Their results
are, however, seriously hampered by financial, policy and political challenges in
implementing successful sanitation and solid waste collection projects.
Keywords: Africa; CBO; NGO; environmental services; sanitation; solid waste
management

1. Introduction
This study has been produced in the context of the project Partnership for Research on
Viable Environmental Infrastructure Development in East Africa (PROVIDE), which
focuses on and contributes to the improvement of urban sanitation and solid waste manage-
ment in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania), with an emphasis on the Lake Victoria
Region. The project seeks to identify and assess viable options for improving the sanitation
and solid waste situation in East Africa and for realising the millennium development goals
(MDG). An important and successful model for implementing health programmes, includ-
ing those of sanitation and solid waste services, in urban poor areas (slums) is to work
through existing NGOs and CBOs (Environment and Health Project Report 2004). In
developing countries, the efforts of NGOs and CBOs are often directed towards the infor-
mal settlements, which accommodate the majority of the poor urban dwellers (Mwanza
2001). In some African countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia these settle-
ments are considered illegal, leaving most of the burden for provision of both infrastructure


Corresponding author. Email: Judith.Tukahirwa@wur.nl

ISSN 1354-9839 print/ISSN 1469-6711 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13549830903406032
http://www.informaworld.com
2 J.T. Tukahirwa et al.

services to NGOs and CBOs (Mulenga et al. 2004). The aim of this paper therefore is to
identify and assess the contribution of NGOs and CBOs in various public – private-partner-
ships to improving urban sanitation and solid waste management. This paper borrows the
World Bank definition of NGOs as not-for-profit organisations that pursue activities to
relieve the suffering, promote the interest of the poor and provide basic services. In this
paper, CBOs are seen as not-for-profit grassroots organisations with local membership
that work to develop their own communities. In understanding the contribution of NGOs
and CBOs in sanitation and solid waste management, the capital of Uganda, Kampala, is
taken as a research site.
Uganda is one of the countries that the UN-habitat identified as priority area in achiev-
ing the MDG of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and
sanitation by 2015, and improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by
2020. In Kampala, poor sanitation and solid waste management are among the most press-
ing and challenging environmental problems. The poor situation of sanitation and solid
waste management in Kampala came into existence in the mid-1990s. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the population in Kampala was less than one million people (774,241).
There were limited cases of outbreak of sanitary diseases and the city was relatively
clean. The government was the main provider of sanitation and solid waste management
services. However, improvement in security led to a high influx of rural migrants to the
already congested urban centres (divisions) in Kampala. This put a constraint on govern-
ment services (sanitation and solid waste), which were free of charge at that time. The
increased pressure on and deteriorating quality of governmental services not only caused
poor environmental conditions but also threatened the health and quality-of-life of the
urban population. In order to achieve the MDGs, targets for sanitation access for house-
holds in Kampala were set at 92% for 2006/2007 and 100% for 2014/2015. However,
no reliable data are available regarding the achievement of the 2006/2007 target, nor
regarding the percentage of urban households with access to improved sanitation as of
2007 (Government of Uganda 2007).
The government of Uganda recognised the weakness of public authorities in sanitation
and solid waste service delivery (especially in Kampala), which led the Kampala City
Council (KCC) in 1997 to design a policy programme, the so-called strategic framework
for reform (SFR). One of the main elements of SFR is to shift service delivery activities
to the private sector, with KCC concentrating its efforts on planning, specification,
supervision and monitoring to ensure quality service delivery and adequate coverage.
Subsequently, an action plan for municipal solid waste management was developed in
1999. Among the objectives of this action plan was the identification of opportunities for
the private sector and for community-based and non-governmental organisations (CBOs
and NGOs) to participate in urban waste management and planning. This plan was
implemented with the introduction of a new solid waste ordinance in 2000. The importance
of NGOs and CBOs in urban service delivery had also been acknowledged in the 1995
Constitution, in the 1997 Local Government Act, in the 1997 Kampala Declaration on
Sanitation,1 as well as in various sanitation and solid waste management projects (Anschütz
1996, Pfammatter and Schertenleib 1996, El-Karawy 2006). This call for and acknowledg-
ment of private sector involvement in urban service delivery is not a specific Ugandan
phenomenon, but more widely proliferated throughout the African continent.
Besides anecdotal evidence little systematic knowledge exists of the actual contribution
from NGOs and CBOs to sanitation and solid waste improvement in Uganda. Have these
CBOs and NGOs really become heavily involved in urban sanitation and solid waste
management? What tasks have they been performing, and with what success? This paper
 Local Environment 3

aims to gain more systematic knowledge on the actual role of NGOs and CBOs in sanitation
and solid waste management in the poorer areas of Kampala, as well as to assess the
challenges they meet. The paper starts with outlining a framework for understanding
the modernisation process of sanitation and solid waste management in East Africa, and
the role of partnerships in supporting further developments in this field. The third section
reports the results from an empirical survey among Ugandan NGOs and CBOs, followed
by an overview of the various arrangements they are participating in. Subsequently, the
main challenges for successful CBO and NGO involvement in sanitation and solid waste
are analysed. The last section provides the conclusions.

2. NGOs and CBOs as modernising agents: models and methods

There is a wide body of literature on the role of NGOs and CBOs in developing countries,
focusing on a variety of sectors and activities, including environmental services (Gorman
1984, Hasan 1990, Murphy 1990, Edwards and Hulme 1992, UNCHS 1996, de los Rios
Bernardini 1997; Gaye and Diallo 1997, Harper 1997, Howes 1997, Hulme and Edwards
1997, Hulme and Michael 1997, Khan 1997, Stewart 1997, Gaventa 1998, Mitlin 1998,
2001, Barr et al. 2005). In developing countries NGOs and CBOs are increasingly
becoming engaged in community development and environmental management activities,
including sanitation and solid waste management. These organisations are emerging as
effective actors, whose activities and resources either complement those of the state and
the private sector, cooperate with those of the state and the private sector in partnership
arrangements, or incidentally also replace them (Muller and Hoffman 2001, African
Development Bank 2002, Ikiara et al. 2004, Karanja 2005). The success and role of
NGOs and CBOs in sanitation and solid waste management differs among the various
countries in the developing world, depending on the financial, material, and institutional
constraints of the organisations and the specific institutional context of the countries they
work in.
The growing attention for NGOs and CBOs in urban environmental service upgrading
should be understood against the background of year of experiences of failures in modernis-
ing environmental services in urban centres of developing countries. These failures have
resulted in the search for new – more successful – practices and models of how existing
sanitation systems and solid waste management arrangements can be improved in a more sus-
tainable way. Various models have been put forward in the modernisation of environmental
services. The modernised mixtures and partnership perspectives are two recent ideas/models
that give NGOs and CBOs a larger role and responsibility in urban environmental services
upgrading.
Upgrading the provision of sanitation and solid waste services should be understood as
the development of the so-called modernised mixtures (Spaargaren et al. 2006, Hegger
2007, Scheinberg and Mol 2010). In improving sanitation and solid waste management
in African urban centres, one should not so much take as reference western models of
highly centralised, advanced technological, costly, unsustainable and fully privatised
systems. Nor should the focal point be the continuation of existing local decentralised, com-
munity-based and low-technological practices and systems. Rather, the idea of modernised
mixtures is to develop and implement intelligent, context-dependent combinations of
western systems and successful local practices and arrangements. This requires a consistent
optimisation of sanitation and solid waste technologies, management arrangements, actor
involvements and supporting policies. The actual system(s) to be used is dependent on
the specific local – physical, economic, political and social – context. In most of the
4 J.T. Tukahirwa et al.

African urban centres, this context requires a strong involvement of non-state actors in
sanitation and solid waste improvement.
Sanitation and solid waste management in Africa is no longer a monopoly of state auth-
orities or the government, if it ever was. Nor do we witness successful sanitation and solid
waste services fully run by private companies. It is widely felt that successful sanitation and
solid waste management in African urban centres cannot be achieved by one single (collec-
tive) actor. In such situations, the partnership paradigm (Linder and Rosenau 2000, Poncelet
2000, Glasbergen et al. 2007) offers a useful (though sometimes confusing; Linder 1999)
framework to understand and study how various actors collaborate and partner in the
provisioning of (collective) goods. The partnership paradigm and theory argues that, in
partnership there is a tendency to collaborate in order to solve emergent societal issues,
among which environmental ones have been most prominent (cf. Glasbergen et al.
2007). Partnerships are believed to have bounced on the scene globally because many
nation states failed in providing basic services (such as sanitation and solid waste services),
in particular to the poor (cf. Baud 2004). Thus partnerships have been seen to promote
the expansion in the quantity and quality of public services beyond levels possible under
pure private or pure public arrangements (Jones 2000, Ayee and Crook 2003). In addition,
some authors claim that a combination of different actors is more likely to meet the
variation in demands from the population living under different circumstances (Muller
and Hoffman 2001). The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also believes
that partnerships increase access of the urban poor to basic services (sanitation and solid
waste management) through the NGO and CBO participation, and hence contribute to
the achievement of the MDGs. In such partnerships, NGOs and CBOs can act as new mod-
ernising agents, working together with governmental agencies and private companies in
upgrading sanitation and solid waste management.
But in analysing partnerships in the area of sanitation and solid waste management in
Africa, UNDP notices that these have mainly emerged between government and the large
private companies. Notwithstanding the rhetoric, often NGOs and CBOs have been
excluded from the formal partnership arrangements in sanitation and solid waste. They
have played a role in more informal projects and practices of sanitation and solid waste
management in poorer urban settlements (cf. Wilson et al. 2006), but the dominant mode
of partnerships in solid waste management – and to a lesser extent sanitation – has been
to contract large scale private companies by the government. From a modernised mixtures
model, this is not necessarily the most preferred model; and the practice of Kampala and
other urban centres in East Africa seems to illustrate that these market models with
large-scale private companies do not solve the urban solid waste and sanitation problems,
especially not those of the poor. The call for wider partnerships, also involving CBOs
and NGOs, is heard more widely recently, building on a number of successful experiences.
But evidence of the involvement, problems and successes of NGOs/CBOs in sanitation
and solid waste remains rather fragmented and little systematic. Against this background,
this paper aims to review more systematically what the current involvement of NGOs
and CBOs is in sanitation and solid waste management in Kampala.

2.1 Research methods

A full inventory was carried out between August 2007 and July 2008 among NGOs and
CBOs in Kampala, and 62 of these organisations were found to be currently and/or in the
past active in the development and implementation of sanitation and solid waste
management. Subsequently, a survey was implemented among these 62 organisations.
 Local Environment 5

In addition, over 25 face-to-face interviews were held with key informants from these NGOs
and CBOs, from relevant ministries, from local councils or municipalities, and from other
government agencies that had links with the NGOs, CBOs, and NGO-umbrella organisations.
Direct observations were made for identifying some of the major weaknesses and innovative
approaches applied in solving problems of sanitation and solid waste management. Annual
reports, project and programme progress reports, and evaluation reports – both internal
and external – on NGOs and CBOs were collected and reviewed. Also collected were
reports from the relevant government ministries, departments and agencies.

3. Improving sanitation and solid waste through NGOs and CBOs

3.1 The NGO/CBO landscape
In total 62 NGOs and CBOs were identified, which (had) carried out sanitation and/or solid
waste management activities in the five divisions of Kampala. Over 44 (70%) of the ident-
ified NGOs and CBOs were found to be still participating in activities related to sanitation
and solid waste management. The other 18 (30%) had stopped their activities in this
environmental service sector, mostly because of financial constraints. Of the 44 active
NGOs and CBOs, 41 (92%) were involved in other activities besides sanitation and solid
waste management. Most of the active NGOs and CBOs were local ones (15 and 17, or
34% and 39%, respectively), while a few were local branches of international NGOs
(12, or 27%) that enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy. The international organisations
(local branches) carried out a larger diversity of activities (see the section below) than
the local NGOs and especially the CBOs (Table 1). The international organisations had
funds that enabled them carry to out the activities they so wished to support. Local
NGOs and CBOs lacked funds for implementation of all planned activities for sanitation
and solid waste management.
NGOs and CBOs had varying degrees of geographical coverage of their services. Of the
NGOs and CBOs, 16 (41%) claimed to provide their services in one division of the city,
while 8 (18%) serviced more divisions in Kampala and another 16 (41%) (especially,
the local branches of international NGOs) serviced more places throughout the whole
country (beyond Kampala). Most of the local NGOs and CBOs (30 or 94%) claimed that

Table 1. Sanitation and solid waste management activities of NGOs and CBOs (%).
International NGOs (local Local NGOs Local CBOs
Activities branches) (N ¼ 12) (N ¼ 15) (N ¼ 17)
Advocacy services 9 2 0
Capacity building 12 6 1
Community sensitisation 12 14 13
and mobilisation
Recycling 4 9 11
Construction of latrines 8 5 0
Garbage collection 1 6 12
Support to other NGOs and 9 1 0
CBOs
Advisory services 9 1 1
Monitory services 9 4 0
Cleaning of drainage 3 10 7
Source: Survey.
6 J.T. Tukahirwa et al.

they chose to serve certain localities, because they aimed to attract a specific category of
households, who were mainly poor and living in unplanned settlements (slums). Most
NGOs and CBOs involved in sanitation belong to Uganda Water and Sanitation Network
(UWASNET), an umbrella organisation that helps with the coordination and updating
member NGOs and CBOs with information on sanitation. This umbrella organisation
also contributes to the formation of partnerships among its members.

3.2 NGO and CBO activities

NGOs and CBOs in Kampala were involved in a number of sanitation and solid waste
management activities as shown in Table 1.
About three-quarters of all NGOs and CBOs were involved in community sensitisation
and mobilisation. This activity ranked highest among international NGOs (local branches)
and local NGOs. These NGOs aimed at changing the behaviour of the people towards proper
sanitation and solid waste management. For example, Envirocare Initiative, a local NGO,
trained over 220 community leaders on proper waste disposal and management in Kawempe
division in 2007. This organisation also trained 240 volunteers in 2006 to reach out to the
communities. Sensitisation of communities was realised mainly informally through local
meetings, posters, music and drama. In addition, all the international NGOs (local branches)
carried out capacity building, especially for local NGOs and CBOs. And, indeed, all local
NGOs and CBOs indicated that they had followed training from more than one international
NGO (local branch). Important areas of training included sanitation and solid waste policy
monitoring, ecological sustainable technologies (ecosan toilets and organic recycling), and
business skills. Living Earth Uganda, for example, had imparted technical skills in recycling
to local NGOs and CBOs. It had trained NGOs and CBOs in sustainable urban agriculture
and business skills, such as designing business plans and marketing.
About three-quarters of the international NGOs (local branches) carried out advocacy,
advisory, and monitoring activities, and provided support services. This was possible
because these NGOs had enough financial resources to intensively lobby for policy
changes, focusing especially on the solid waste ordinance that was believed to have major
shortcomings. The main point advocated was to allow NGOs and CBOs in the overall
tendering process for garbage collection contracts. NGOs and CBOs are believed to
operate more effectively than new private companies, especially in poor neighbourhoods.
International NGOs (local branches) also monitored activities of local NGOs and CBOs,
whom they were supporting. International NGOs such as Concern Worldwide Uganda and
Water Aid Uganda assisted local CBOs and NGOs in the implementation of development
and management plans for sanitation and waste management facilities, not unlike what
many international NGOs in other developing countries do (Pfammatter and Schertenleib
1996). They also provided local CBOs grants to buy equipment, such as wheelbarrows,
spades, sacs, forks and masks for garbage collection.
International NGOs and local NGOs (about two-thirds and one-third, respectively)
constructed toilets for individual households and communities. A number of sanitation
technologies are implemented by these organisations, mostly ecosan, twin alternating
and VIP toilets.2 These organisations usually contributed 90% of the costs of building
toilets, while communities or individuals paid 10%. For extremely vulnerable groups
such as widows, HIV-infected persons, elderly and orphans, NGOs contributed 100% of
the toilet construction costs. For example, Sustainable Sanitation and Water Renewal
systems SSWARS, a local NGO, constructed alternating twin pit latrines which were suit-
able for areas with high water tables and unplanned areas where most poor people were
 Local Environment 7

living (slums). The main advantage of this system is that one part of the toilet is used at least
up to one year before switching to the next. A loose slab is placed on each toilet side, which
can be easily removed when emptying the toilets. When one part of the toilet is filled, it is
closed and left to decompose. SSWARS encouraged and sensitised communities on the
benefits of using the manure for compost. SSWARS built 10 toilets for communities and
the beneficiaries of these toilets contributed 10% of the construction costs. SSWARS
remained involved in monitoring the toilets after construction.
According to KCC about 1500 tonnes of waste is generated daily and of this only less
than half (600 tonnes) is collected and taken to the dumping site (Kitazi). These 1500 tonnes
of waste contain 170 tonnes of plastic waste, of which only 2% is collected for recycling.
According to the National Environmental Management Authority about 3000 tonnes of
plastic waste remains uncollected in the city streets. The overwhelming amount of uncol-
lected waste has attracted a number of actors, such as NGOs and CBOs that seek to
improve the situation through better collection rates and more recylcing.
Garbage collection and solid waste recycling was primarily an activity of local NGOs
and CBOs, but their involvement in solid waste collection is diminishing. Solid waste
collection services initially carried out by the local NGOs have been greatly affected by
the introduction of privatisation. Under privatisation, KCC gives contracts for garbage
collection only to medium-sized and large private companies. While working reasonably
well in the planned, richer areas, these companies often fail to satisfy poor communities
in the unplanned settlements. The large trucks used by these companies cannot access
these settlements, and payments for waste collection are often too high for the poor.
While the solid waste ordinance advocates equal involvement of private companies and
NGOs/CBOs in solid waste collection services, NGOs and CBOs feel they have been
sidelined. For example, KCC requires bank guarantees of 5 million Uganda shilling
(US$3000) and access to trucks for transporting waste, in order to enter the solid waste
tendering process. Hence, most of the local CBOs collecting the garbage have to work
with the large private companies contracted by the local government (cf. Table 2).
In contrast to waste collection, recycling activities by CBOs and NGOs are not (yet)
affected by unfavourable state policies. Recycling activities are important because they
reduce the amount of waste reaching the dump site, reduce the accumulation of waste in
homes and neighbourhoods, and generate income. Uncollected plastic waste deteriorates
the living environment and blocks water channels, accelerating flooding in various neigh-
bourhoods in Kampala. Some NGOs, such as Envirocare Initiative, have been successful in
organising recycling activities. In both 2006 and 2007 over 7 tons of deposited plastic and
polythene waste was collected from the communities in Kawempe division and taken to

Table 2. Partnerships involving NGOs and CBOs (%).

International
NGOs (local
branches) Local NGOs Local CBOs
(N ¼ 12) (N ¼ 15) (N ¼ 17)
Collaboration with: N % N % N %
Government 10 83 15 100 17 100
Private company 1 8 4 27 10 60
Other CBOs or NGOs 11 92 14 93 17 100
Source: Survey.
8 J.T. Tukahirwa et al.

recycling industries in Nakawa. While the amount of plastic waste collected for recycling
appears small compared with the total amount of plastic waste, it contributes greatly to the
2% of plastic waste that is collected for recycling in Kampala as mentioned above. Other
recycling activities included the production of organic manure, making of crafts, roofing
tiles, fencing poles (from plastic waste) and charcoal briquettes.
In conclusion, those activities that require significant resources (monetary resources,
fixed capital/equipment, knowledge and information, and access to politics) are predomi-
nantly carried out by (local branches of) international NGOs, while the domestic local
NGOs and CBOs are more and more pushed towards sensitisation, waste recycling, drai-
nage cleaning, and garbage collection.

4. NGOs and CBOs in partnerships

As mentioned above in the introduction, as early as the mid-1990s, the government of
Uganda recognised the limited capability and capacity of Kampala local authorities to
provide adequate sanitation and solid waste management to all the urban communities,
and especially to the poor. In order to increase the provision of sanitation and solid
waste services, the government actively involved NGOs, CBOs, and private companies
through various partnerships. This is in line with what is observed more generally: most
recent interest in partnership in the environmental field in the environment is related to part-
nership where civil society is present (Mol 2007, p. 219). Indeed, all the NGOs and CBOs
in our survey participate in some form of partnership (often in more than one partnership)
with government, private companies, and other NGOs and CBOs (cf. Table 2).

4.1 Partnership with governmental authorities

All the local NGOs and CBOs and over three-quarters of the international NGOs (local
branches) were in some form of collaboration with governmental authorities in sanitation
and solid waste management. Despite the widely perceived shortcomings in sanitation
and solid waste management policies of KCC among these organisations, the NGOs and
CBOs continued cooperating with KCC. KCC also affirmed their priority to work with
NGOs and CBOs in promoting good sanitation and solid waste management, especially
in the poorer neighbourhoods. The forms of collaboration and the level of formalisation
and institutionalisation of that collaboration, differed widely. For some NGOs and CBOs
involved in garbage collection, KCC provided trucks once a month for transporting
garbage to the dump site. International NGOs (local branches) collaborated – often not
very systematic and planned – with KCC in the provision of toilets to poor communities.
Other modes of collaboration take a more formal, institutionalised form, such as annual
contracts given by KCC to NGOs and CBOs to sweep parts of the city. While this
collaboration aimed at improving sanitation and solid waste management, it also created
employment to the members of local NGOs and CBOs. Kisenyi Community Health
Workers Association (KICHWA), a local NGO had 211 members participating in street
sweeping contracts at a monthly fee of 75,000 Uganda shillings (approximately US$45).
NGOs and CBOs involved in such collaborations have been able to sustain themselves
through deducting a fee of 10% from the street sweepers’ allowance.
Donor projects in other developing countries such as India advocated for effective
partnerships between government, NGOs, and CBOs to ensure access of the urban poor to
environmental services (USAID 2002). In Uganda, such projects have not yielded much,
and generally collaboration between government authorities and NGOs/CBOs in Kampala
 Local Environment 9

is in need of further formalisation and institutionalisation. The existing institutional frame-

work is not conducive to enhance collaboration, provides NGOs and CBOs no formalised
role and enables governmental authorities to neglect NGOs and CBOs, even if they are
already involved in for instance donor projects or local activities in sanitation and solid
waste management. This results in actual and potential future conflicts in the roles of
government and NGOs/CBOs in sanitation and solid waste provisioning. In addition, in part-
nerships of NGOs/CBOs and the government, the roles of the government and the NGOs/
CBOs are often not well defined and hence do not address issues of responsibilities and
accountability. There is need for further institutionalisation and formalisation of cooperative
efforts to realise their potential and their objectives. Hence, the role of NGOs and CBOs
should be formalised in policy documents and laws, in order to get collaborations better
institutionalised. Only then can such partnerships improve public service delivery, as we
see in other developing parts of the world (cf. Anschütz 1996, Serageldin et al. 2000).

4.2 Partnership with private companies

Partnerships with private companies are predominantly found with CBOs and in garbage
collection and recycling activities. Some foreign private companies provide funds for
purchasing equipment for garbage collection and for the construction of demonstration
sites for recycling. Other private companies, especially plastic recycling industries, also
support community mobilisation and sensitisation activities of local NGOs and CBOs.
Incentives – in the form of basic necessities such as sugar, soap, salt – were provided to
local communities involved in recycling activities, through local NGOs and CBOs.
International NGOs (local branches) hardly collaborated with private companies. For the
few NGOs that developed a partnership with private companies, it was mainly in
the area of toilet construction for individuals as well as for communities. These NGOs
then contracted private companies to construct toilets.
Private companies contracted by the government to collect garbage face challenges
from communities who fail to pay for their services (cf. Broekema 2004). In various
cases, government authorities have involved NGOs and CBOs to assist private companies
with sensitisation of communities on issues of garbage collection and the fees involved.
But such collaboration often fails, also in Kampala, especially in cases where private
companies set fees higher than the initial fees of the government or of NGOs/CBOs.
Only when CBOs/NGOs were involved from the start of garbage collection contracting,
such partnerships proved successful.

4.3 Partnership with other NGOs and CBOs

Almost all NGOs and CBOs are engaged in collaborative relations with other NGOs and
CBOs in sanitation and solid waste management. International NGOs (local branches)
provided financial support and capacity building to local NGOs and CBOs. The
UWASNET, to which most NGOs and CBOs working in sanitation belong, helps with
coordination and sharing information on sanitation, thereby also contributing to the
formation of partnerships among its members.
Partnerships have increased access of the urban poor to basic services such as sanitation
and solid waste, and have expanded the quantity and quality of public services beyond levels
possible under pure private or pure public arrangements (Jones 2000, Ayee and Crook 2003).
While Uganda acknowledges the importance of partnerships in solving the sanitation and
solid waste situation, these partnerships are yet to yield results in terms of improved quantity
10 J.T. Tukahirwa et al.

and quality of the urban poor sanitation and soil waste management. For instance, despite the
collaborations between NGOs, CBOs, and government, 38 (or 86%) of the NGOs and CBOs
judged partnership collaborations as neither preferential nor as a barrier for successful
sanitation and solid waste systems. This lack of trust and confidence in partnerships or
collaborations is a hindrance to solving problems of sanitation and solid waste management.

5. Constraints and challenges for NGOs and CBOs

Working on sanitation and solid waste issues in the Kampala divisions, NGOs and CBOs
experienced a number of challenges, of which the three most important and widely men-
tioned are outlined in Table 3.

5.1 Financial constraints

The current local government procurement guidelines do not have a provision for NGOs
and CBOs to access the available government funds for sanitation and solid waste manage-
ment. Consequently, NGOs and CBOs in Uganda have experienced difficulties in accessing
government funds for implementing their sanitation and solid waste management activities,
and are dependent on donor funding or on their own income sources (Government of Uganda
2007; interviews). Indeed, almost all studied NGOs and CBOs were donor dependent and
received funds mainly from international NGOs and local branches of international
NGOs. They see it as their challenge to reduce their donor dependency, as it was often
perceived as problematic, undesirable, and not sustainable. Donors and international
NGOs have too much external influence on the agenda and activities of local NGOs and
CBOs. Most of the international NGOs and donors have local branches within the
country through which funds and support for the local NGOs and CBOs is channelled.
They monitor closely the activities of the local NGOs and CBOs and ensure that they are
in their interest. While this influence has been largely positive, it did result in a failure of
CBOs and NGOs to stand on their own and behave more independently.
Partly related to the donor dependency, NGOs and CBOs faced the problem of
inadequate funds to provide services to all the communities within their territory of oper-
ation. The common approach to access more financial resources was through increased
recycling activities and through membership fees. However, the revenues collected
through recycling were too little and membership fees proved often unaffordable for the
poor. For example, Living Earth Uganda, an international NGO (local branch), trained
local NGOs and CBOs to be self-sustaining. They did this through imparting business
skills to these organisations, training them to look at waste as a business opportunity.

Table 3. Challenges/constraints met by NGOs and CBOs in sanitation and solid waste.
International NGOs (local branches) Local NGOs Local CBOs
Challenges (N ¼ 12) (N ¼ 15) (N ¼ 17)
Inadequate All All All
finances
Policy All All All
shortcomings
Politics All All 15 (88%)
Source: Survey.
 Local Environment 11

In the developed business models, the production of organic manure, making of crafts,
charcoal briquettes production, and selling collected plastic waste to plastic companies
are key income-generating activities. A side-effect is, however, that CBOs start competing
with the private companies for clients in the more affluent areas, while ignoring the poor
communities they originally served. This dilemma is not unique to Kampala; similar
cities in developing countries face this problem (cf. Kaseva and Mbuligwe 2003).
There are two ways out of this dilemma of donor dependency. A further upgrading and
diversification of strategies/activities for acquiring income by NGOs and CBOs, so that
they become self-sustaining. Or government contracting of sanitation and solid waste ser-
vices to these organisations (see below). Both strategies result in civil society organisations
that increasingly take up business characteristics.

5.2 Policy constraints

One of the major constraints identified by NGOs and CBOs is related to the current sanitation
and solid waste policies. Although current policies fully recognise the value of NGOs and
CBOs and include them formally under the private sector, all the work is contracted out to
large-scale formal private companies. This situation is similar to Cairo (El-Karawy 2006,
Wilson et al. 2006), where the city authorities contract out waste management to international
companies and neglect the position of the civil society organisations in sanitation and solid
waste. But other major urban centres show contrasting practices. Dar es Salaam has
adopted new sanitation and solid waste approaches, by giving contracts to local NGOs and
CBOs (Bhatia and Gurnani 1996, Post 1999, Kaseva and Mbuligwe 2003; Karanja 2005).
The solution for Kampala would not be very complicated. Privatisation of solid waste
management resulted in the requirement that all involved parties have trucks for garbage
collection and transport, although the poor unplanned urban areas lack roads to accommodate
these trucks. A policy change to allow the replacement of trucks by wheel barrows and other
equipment, which can access unplanned neighbourhoods, would take away one of the
most significant current barriers for NGO/CBO involvement. More structurally, NGOs
and CBOs would need to become involved in all stages of the waste and sanitation policy-
making process, to prevent such barriers in the future. For this to happen there is a need to
harmonise more effectively sanitation and solid waste policies in order to provide an enabling
environment for the involvement or participation of NGOs and CBOs.

5.3 Politics
Close to all civil society organisations in this study experience, local political interference
as a major constraint, especially close to and during elections. NGOs and CBOs are more
than incidentally accused by politicians to be political mobilisers, rather than genuinely
carrying out sanitation work. This perception by politicians hinders their activities. The
inability of local NGOs and CBOs to sustain their activities in sanitation and solid waste
management and shifts in their goals in times of financial shortage, contribute to that suspi-
cion by politicians. More transparency and further involvement of all stakeholders in their
work is seen as a key strategy to overcome these political constraints.

6. Conclusion
NGOs and CBOs are no longer standing on the sidelines of sanitation and solid waste
management, waiting to be called to take up the leftovers of conventional urban service
12 J.T. Tukahirwa et al.

provisioning; they are already fully involved. By the same token, these civil society
organisations move beyond just implementing marginal projects in poor neighbourhood
areas. In that sense, we see a kind of modernised mixture model emerging, where the
conventional advocates of large-scale, privatised, and high technological sanitation
and solid waste services become mixed with civil society organisations whose activities
and agendas initially remained limited to small projects in poor unplanned neighbourhoods.
It becomes increasingly accepted that effective sanitation and solid waste management in
African cities can only be achieved through collaboration of governmental authorities
and agencies, NGOs and CBOs, and the private sector (Oosterveer 2009). Hence the
idea of environmental partnership is widely shared and supported.
But the successful implementation and operationalisation of, and the division of
tasks, responsibilities and power in, such partnerships proves far from easy and comes
along with major hurdles and constraints. Hence, the involvement of NGOs and CBOs
has been hampered by, among others, shortage of resources, donor dependencies, central
policies that favour the formal large-scale private companies, and lack of government
recognition. While policies formally advocate for involvement for NGOs and CBOs,
these policies have not been very helpful for civil society organisations in practice
because of the official conditions included.
Therefore, for NGOs and CBOs to successfully become partners in the implemen-
tation and development of sanitation and solid waste services, a reform is necessary of
the policies, the policy-making process as well as the policy enforcement. This asks
for a further rethinking of the role of the public and private actors in urban service pro-
visioning. Can we have just partnerships in the implementation of service provisioning,
while leaving the policy design and the enforcement in the hands of the state? Most
likely not. And if we widen the partnerships in urban services beyond the execution
of government policies, what is the key and specific role of the state in such public –
private partnerships (cf. Mol 2007)? Is it just one among the many partners or does
the government continue to have primacy in regulation, monitoring, enforcement, and
execution? Hence, the often quoted solution of partnerships for the problem of ineffective
sanitation and solid waste management in African cities, raises a number of new, challen-
ging issues.

Acknowledgement
We would like to extend our appreciation to the Interdisciplinary Research and Education Fund
(INREF) of Wageningen University, the Netherlands, for funding this study. Special thanks go to
the NGOs and CBOs for their invaluable time used to respond to the questionnaire and interviews.

Notes
1. The Kampala declaration on Sanitation was endorsed by all five Kampala districts and urges the
government to create an enabling environment to facilitate the provision of urban services
through NGO and CBO participation.
2. These three systems are onsite sanitation technologies that are pro-poor and also offer similar
benefits and user convenience as the conventional systems. The systems require less water,
which is a scarce commodity in those areas, and can be built and repaired with locally available
materials. The systems also have low capital and operation costs and claim to be suitable for all
types of users. Ecosan toilets are ecologically sustainable because they separate faeces and urine,
which allows faeces to dehydrate and be treated to an appropriate level that is safe to use in agri-
culture. Urine can be recovered. It is suitable for Kampala because of the high water table. The
VIP toilets have an external vertical vent pipe with a fly screen at the top, which reduces faecal
 Local Environment 13

odour and minimises fly breeding. However, the ecological sustainability of the VIP toilets and
alternating pit latrines is debated, especially given the nature of the local conditions in Kampala,
which are marshy and with a high water table.

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